Monday, November 4, 2013

I
remember hearing of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings on the news last
year. I couldn’t bear to watch the chaos unfold. Frantic parents waiting to
hear the names of the children who had survived…and those who hadn’t.
My heart was broken over the evil that is all too present in our world. I felt
the same way in April when I got a phone call from my brother who had been a
few blocks away from the bombings at the Boston marathon. Runners who should
have been exhilarated at the end of the race were instead laying in a pool of
blood, fighting for their lives.

While
discussing these tragedies with several Christian friends, one of them said, “I
sure don’t understand it, but I know everything happens for a reason.”

This
statement did not sit well with me. How could everything happen for a reason? Are women raped and children
murdered for a reason? To believe this would imply that God is the author of
evil, which contradicts Scripture.

James
1:13 says, “God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt
anyone.”

1
John 1:5 says, “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”

We cannot take an evil, sinful act and attribute it to God's "sovereign will." God
HATES sin. It is never His desire
for us to do evil. That’s why He calls us to “be holy, as I am holy.” 1 Peter
1:16. He created the world to be good, yet humankind went against His perfect
plan and brought sin into the world with the first bite of the forbidden fruit.

We
cannot lazily go throughout our lives assuming that our actions are acceptable
just because God allows them to happen. Some will say that it is impossible to
go against God’s will. From what I see in Scripture, we go against God’s will
every time that we choose to sin.

John
Calvin states it well, “. . . the Lord had declared that "everything that
he had made . . . was exceedingly good" [Gen. 1:31]. Whence, then comes this wickedness to man, that
he should fall away from his God? Lest we should think it comes from creation,
God had put His stamp of approval on what had come forth from himself. By his
own evil intention, then, man corrupted the pure nature he had received from
the Lord; and by his fall drew all his posterity with him into destruction.
Accordingly, we should contemplate the evident cause of condemnation in the
corrupt nature of humanity-which is closer to us-rather than seek a hidden and
utterly incomprehensible cause in God's predestination. [Institutes, 3:23:8]

With
that being said, God, in His sovereignty, allows evil to happen. In His
infinite wisdom, He allows humankind to make decisions and ultimately uses all
things to bring Him glory. Even this has been hard for me to grasp at times,
but I have to remember that God’s thoughts are not my thoughts, neither are his
ways my ways (Isaiah 55:8).

While God allows evil to unfold, He does not create
it. He doesn’t delight in it. I believe it breaks His heart. I can imagine God weeping
with the families of those who died in the Boston bombings.

Jesus
tells us that in this world we WILL have many troubles (John 16:33), “but take
heart! I have overcome the world.” We
will always have tragedies and heart aches and evil on this earth. That is the
result of sin. I
take great comfort in knowing that God does not delight in these things, but
He has overcome them!

Romans 8:28 is
one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It says, “And we know that in all
things, God works for the good of those who love Him.”

My
friend James is from Rwanda. During the horrific genocide, 11 of his relatives
were brutally murdered. He was
devastated, he was angry…he wanted justice. But as a believer, in Christ, he
chose to see how God would use his terrible situation to allow something good
to happen. Years later, he went back to the village where those who had murdered
his family lived. He didn’t fight back. He didn’t even show hostility. Instead,
he did the unthinkable…He forgave them. Then he shared with them the Good News
about Jesus who had forgiven him of his sins. He told them that since God had
forgiven him, he also wanted to forgive them. The murderers were so struck by
his act of grace and forgiveness, that they each chose to follow Jesus. That
village in Rwanda is now growing as more and more people come to know the Lord.
It’s only a small glimpse of how God is working for good in that situation.

So does everything really happen for a reason? I don't think so. But is God always working for the good in all situations? Yes. Even when God allows tragedy to strike, and even when our sin gets in the way, He will always work it out. We may not always see it, but He is working in ways that we cannot even imagine to accomplish His will.